“Don’t be.” Her voice is fierce. “Look at me.”
Slowly my eyes focus on her face. Her mouth is trembling. Her eyes are a bit too bright. Is she upset? Dammit, I scared her that much?
“I’m here.” Not what I was going to say.
No idea what that would have been, honestly. I can only give her the truth, and the truth is that I get lost inside my mind sometimes.
Her hand slides up to my cheek, smooth and warm. She studies me as if she can see through to my soul. “Now you are.”
Here, with the smell of bleach and my hand burning where the chemical touched it, though my body is burning hotter where she touches me, and my heart is pounding as if I’ve run ten miles.
“Tell me what happened,” she whispers, but I can’t.
Her mouth is so close I can smell her peppermint toothpaste and cherry lip gloss. I can almost taste it, taste her.
Not fair to ask a guy to think, not like this. Her warm body draped over mine is everything. It could almost make me forget the mother of shitty days I’ve just had.
But my leg and arm muscles twitch, and my back aches, reminders of the whole afternoon spent on my hands and knees. A headache is beating at the backs of my eyes and inside my temples.
“West.”
“Yeah.” Her fingers slide to my jaw, every movement sending pleasure through me, and I’m staring at her lips, my throat dry. “Just…”
Her lashes lower, her lips part, and every place where we touch burns. My dick is rock-hard in my sweats, and the way she’s sitting, one leg thrown over mine, I bet she can feel it. How couldn’t she? I’m pitching such a tent it’s a miracle fabric isn’t tearing right now.
“You were cleaning the apartment again,” she says, and I frown, her words not computing. “Oh my God, this has to stop.”
“What?”
“How miserable you and Nate are without each other.” She pulls away from me, her hand leaving my face, leaving a breath of cold behind. “You know I’m right.”
I blink and reality returns, like a punch to the plexus that leaves me winded.
But then her words sink in. “Nate is miserable?”
“You heard that, huh? He sure is.” She looks away, and I’m fascinated by the way her small white teeth sink into her lower lip. “I am, too, not that you’d care.”
I blow out a long breath. “I care. Syd.” I’m reaching for her before I realize what I’m doing, drawing her back into my arms. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she says, voice muffled against my shoulder. “Just don’t do it again.”
A snort escapes me.
Syd is right. Not having her and Nate around has been messing with my head, taking me back to a place I haven’t been in years. A hopeless place.
Is it the same for Nate? Is it why he’s gone back to getting into fights at school?
“Okay, I lied,” she says, letting me hold her. “I’m not forgiving you this easily. I need you to do something for me first. Deal?”
“Anything.”
Anything to keep her here, against me, her tangle of copper curls tickling my nose, the sweet weight of her on my legs shutting out the voices in my head.
“Awesome. Come to a party with me?”
“Party?”
“Yeah. The one Mercy Johnson is throwing. Saturday night. Please say you’ll go with me?”